What’s the CX buzz this week? (4th Nov, 2013)

Our team collected some fascinating articles this past week. Each of our picks offers a wealth of insight for all professionals in CRM to learn from. Let us know your thoughts by commenting below, or reach out to us on Twitter.

With more and more contact centers morphing into customer relationship hubs, the number of businesses centralizing their contact center operations is on the rise. This is coupled with advances in contact center technology, which includes cross-channel interaction analytics powered by speech, text and big data-powered solutions. Consequently, insights from contact centers are now driving enterprise-wide processes to build products and services around real customer need. What else can such information hubs deliver when effectively used? This post from customer experience guru Bruce Temkin explains.

Why wouldn’t ‘delight’ translate to incremental loyalty? There has been quite a bit of debate on this topic, more so after HBR made their research public with their Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers message several years ago. Different research firms decided to investigate, and came to the same conclusions. While there’s small incremental loyalty with delight, many companies fail to take care of the basic needs of the customer in the pursuit of delight.

This article from Matthey Dixon, author of The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty points to the need to resolve customer issues first and foremost in order to maintain loyalty. To me, the issue is around how you define ‘delight’. It is no longer about the bells and whistles; rather, it is about providing solid, responsive, and personal service – which absolutely entices loyalty. This is what I call delight!

If customers don’t care about delight, what do they care about? How can businesses deliver on the expectations of their customers? An extensive study of 12,000 consumers by Accenture confirmed that customers place greater priority on simple things such as eliminating long wait times and getting issues resolved in one call. They also appreciate conveniences such as not having to repeat information they already provided on a previous channel (as part of the same interaction), and being transferred to the right agent who can complete the resolution of their issues. Read this post for more information with vertical-specific details, and learn more about the impact of first call resolution on customer loyalty.

Can you guess the cost of bad customer service? You’re getting close but go higher… It’s $83 billion in the US alone. Worldwide, it costs $338 billion. On the flip side, after experiencing great customer service, 71% of consumers are willing to consider the company for another purchase, 64% are likely to recommend it to friends or family, and 42% are less likely to switch to another company. For those of you who need metrics to convince your leadership team about the importance of high quality customer service, check this post out.

The buzz about customer experience and its importance has steadily increased in the last couple of years. As with many buzzwords, there tends to be some confusion and misuse of terms, such as in the case of distinguishing between “customer service” and “customer experience”. This post by Annette Franz, a prominent customer experience professional, eloquently explains the difference.

Share this:

Your comment has been received. Comments may be moderated, we appreciate your patience.

Start a discussion

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*.

My details:

*

*

*

Comment:

WE USE COOKIES

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on this website. If you continue without changing your settings, we’ll assume that you are happy to receive all on the NICE website. However, if you would like, you can change your cookie settings at any time. To find out more about how we use this information, see our Privacy Policy.